Part 21 (1/2)
For years, Chase was racked by the thought that had Ohio remained loyal, he would have won the nomination. Even in a congratulatory letter to Lincoln, he could not refrain from citing his own situation. Supposing that the ”adhesion of the Illinois delegation” yielded Lincoln ”a higher gratification” even than ”the nomination itself,” Chase confessed that the perfidy of his own delegation was unbearable. ”In this...I am quite sure you must partic.i.p.ate,” he sounded Lincoln, ”for I err greatly in my estimate of your magnanimity, if you do not condemn as I do the conduct of delegates, from whatever state, who disregard...the clearly expressed preference of their own State Convention.” Lincoln responded graciously without taking the bait.
Carl Schurz contemplated Chase's torment in the dark hours following the nomination. ”While the victory of Mr. Lincoln was being announced to the outside world,” he wrote, ”my thoughts involuntarily turned to Chase, who, I imagined, sat in a quiet office room at Columbus with a telegraph near by clicking the news from Chicago.... Not even his own State had given him its full strength. No doubt he had hoped, and hoped, and hoped against hope...and now came this disastrous, crus.h.i.+ng, humiliating defeat. I saw that magnificent man before me, writing with the agony of his disappointment, and I sympathized with him most profoundly.”
As the news of Chase's defeat filtered into the streets of Columbus, the dray readied to haul the cannon to the corner of Third and State streets, to announce his victory with a roar of thunder, was used instead to honor Lincoln's nomination. After the short ”melancholy ceremony” was concluded, the dray hauled the cannon back to its shed, and the city went to sleep.
Bates accepted defeat with the composure that had marked his character from the outset. ”As for me, I was surprised, I own, but not at all mortified, at the result at Chicago,” he wrote Greeley. ”I had no claim-literally none-upon the Republicans as a party, and no right to expect their party honors; and I shall cherish, with enduring grat.i.tude, the recollection of the generous confidence with which many of their very best men have honored me. So far from feeling beaten and depressed, I have cause rather for joy and exultation; for, by the good opinion of certain eminent Republicans, I have gained much in standing and reputation before the country-more, I think, than any mere private man I have ever known.”
In his private journal, however, Bates admitted to a sense of irritation. ”Some of my friends who attended the Convention a.s.sure me that the nomination of Mr. Lincoln took every body by surprise: That it was brought about by accident or trick, by which my pledged friends had to vote against me.... The thing was well planned and boldly executed. A few Germans-Schurz of Wisconsin and Koerner of Illinois, with their truculent boldness, scared the timid men of Indiana into submission. Koerner went before the Indiana Delegation and a.s.sured them that if Bates were nominated, the Germans would bolt!”
The platform, he continued, ”is exclusive and defiant, not attracting but repelling a.s.sistance from without.... It lugs in the lofty generalities of the Declaration of Independence, for no practical object that I can see, but needlessly exposing the party to the specious charge of favoring negro equality.... I think they will soon be convinced, if they are not already, that they have committed a fatal blunder-They have denationalized their Party; weakened it in the free states, and destroyed its hopeful beginnings in the border slave states.”
While the melancholy spirit of defeated expectations settled upon the streets of Auburn, Columbus, and St. Louis, Springfield was euphoric. The legendary moment when Lincoln learned of his nomination has sp.a.w.ned many versions over the years. Some claim Lincoln was standing in a shop, purchasing some items that Mary had requested, when cheers were heard from the telegraph office, followed by the shouts of a boy rus.h.i.+ng through the crowd: ”Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln, you are nominated.” Others maintain that he was talking with friends in the office of the Illinois State Journal when he received the news. Handed the sc.r.a.p of paper that reported his victory, he ”looked at it long and silently, not heeding the noisy exultation of all around.” Shaking hands with everyone in the room, he remarked quietly, ”I knew this would come when I saw the second ballot.” Leaving the Journal office, Lincoln plunged into a crowd of well-wishers on the street. ”My friends,” he said, ”I am glad to receive your congratulations, and as there is a little woman down on Eighth street who will be glad to hear the news, you must excuse me until I inform her.” When he reached his home, Ida Tarbell reports, he found that Mary ”already knew that the honor which for twenty years and more she had believed and stoutly declared her husband deserved...at last had come.”
The tumult in Springfield that evening was recorded by a young journalist, John Hay, who would later become Lincoln's aide. He reported that ”the hearty western populace burst forth in the wildest manifestations of joy...Lincoln banners, decked in every style of rude splendor, fluttered in the high west wind.” The church bells tolled. Thousands a.s.sembled in the rotunda of the Capitol for a festive celebration replete with victory speeches. When the meeting adjourned, the happy throngs converged on Lincoln's house. His appearance at the door was ”the signal for immense cheering.” Modestly, Lincoln insisted that ”he did not suppose the honor of such a visit was intended particularly for himself as a private citizen but rather as the representative to a great party.”
FOR GENERATIONS, people have weighed and debated the factors that led to Lincoln's surprising victory. Many have agreed with the verdict of Murat Halstead, who wrote that ”the fact of the Convention was the defeat of Seward rather than the nomination of Lincoln.” Seward himself seemed to accept this a.n.a.lysis. When asked years later why Lincoln had won, he said: ”The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.” Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, ”comparatively unknown, had not to contend with the animosities generally marshaled against a leader.”
There is truth to this argument, but it tells only part of the story, for the question remains: why was Lincoln the beneficiary of Seward's downfall rather than Chase or Bates?
Some have pointed to luck, to the fact that Lincoln lived in a battleground state the Republicans needed to win, and to the fact that the convention was held in Chicago, where the strength of local support could add weight to his candidacy. ”Had the Convention been held at any other place,” Koerner admitted, ”Lincoln would not have been nominated.”
Others have argued that he was positioned perfectly in the center of the party. He was less radical than Seward or Chase, but less conservative than Bates. He was less offensive than Seward to the Know Nothings, but more acceptable than Bates to the German-Americans.
Still others have argued that Lincoln's team in Chicago played the game better than anyone else, conceiving the best strategy and cleverly using the leverage of promises to the best advantage. Without doubt, the Lincoln men, under the skillful leaders.h.i.+p of David Davis, performed brilliantly.
Chance, positioning, and managerial strategy-all played a role in Lincoln's victory. Still, if we consider the comparative resources each contender brought to the race-their range of political skills, their emotional, intellectual, and moral qualities, their rhetorical abilities, and their determination and willingness to work hard-it is clear that when opportunity beckoned, Lincoln was the best prepared to answer the call. His nomination, finally, was the result of his character and his life experiences-these separated him from his rivals and provided him with advantages unrecognized at the time.
Having risen to power with fewer privileges than any of his rivals, Lincoln was more accustomed to rely upon himself to shape events. From beginning to end, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination. While Seward, at Weed's suggestion, spent eight months wandering Europe and the Middle East to escape dissension at home, Lincoln earned the goodwill and respect of tens of thousands with a strenuous speaking tour that left a positive imprint on Republicans in five crucial Midwestern states. While Chase unwisely declined his invitation to speak at the lecture series in New York at Cooper Union, Lincoln accepted with alacrity, recognizing the critical importance of making a good impression in Seward's home territory. In addition, Chase refused invitations to travel to New England and sh.o.r.e up his support. Ironically, despite repeated pledges in his diary to do anything necessary to achieve honor and fame, Chase showed a lack of resolution in the final weeks before the convention.
When ardent Republicans heard Lincoln speak, they knew that if their beloved Seward could not win, they had in the eloquent orator from Illinois a man of considerable capacity whom they could trust, one who would hold fast on the central issue that had forged the party-the fight against extending slavery into the territories. Though Lincoln had entered the antislavery struggle later than Seward or Chase, his speeches possessed unmatched power, conviction, clarity, and moral strength.
At the same time, his native caution and precision with language-he rarely said more than he was sure about, rarely pandered to his various audiences-gave Lincoln great advantages over his rivals, each of whom tried to reposition himself in the months before the convention. Seward disappointed liberal Republicans when he tried to soften his fiery rhetoric to placate moderates. Bates infuriated conservatives with his strongly worded public letter. And Chase fooled no one when he tried to s.h.i.+ft his position on the tariff at the last moment. Lincoln remained consistent throughout.
Nor, as the Chicago Press and Tribune pointed out, was ”his avoidance of extremes” simply ”the result of ambition which measures words or regulates acts.” It was, more accurately, ”the natural consequence of an equable nature and a mental const.i.tution that is never off its balance.”
In his years of travel on the circuit through central Illinois, engaging people in taverns, on street corners, and in shops, Lincoln had developed a keen sense of what people felt, thought, needed, and wanted. Seward, too, had an instinctive feeling for people, but too many years in Was.h.i.+ngton had dulled those instincts. Like Lincoln, Chase had spent many months traveling throughout his home state, but his haughty demeanor prevented him from truly connecting with the farmers, clerks, and bartenders he met along the way. Bates, meanwhile, had isolated himself for so long from the hurly-burly of the political world that his once natural political savvy was diminished.
It was Lincoln's political intuition, not blind luck, that secured the convention site in Chicago. To be sure, the fact that Lincoln was ”comparatively unknown” aided Norman Judd in landing the venue in Illinois. However, it was part of Lincoln's strategy to hold his name back as long as possible and to ”give no offence to others-leave them in a mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first love.” It was Lincoln who first suggested to Judd that it might be important to secure Chicago. And it was Lincoln who first pointed out to his managers that Indiana might be won. Indeed, his guidance and determination were evident at every step along the way to the nomination.
Lincoln, like Seward, had developed a cadre of lifelong friends who were willing to do anything in their power to ensure his nomination. But unlike Seward, he had not made enemies or aroused envy along the way. It is hard to imagine Lincoln letting Greeley's resentment smolder for years as Seward did. On the contrary, he took pains to reestablish rapport with Judd and Trumbull after they had defeated him in his first run for the Senate. His ability to rise above defeat and create friends.h.i.+ps with previous opponents was never shared by Chase, who was unable to forgive those who crossed him. And though Bates had a warm circle of friends in St. Louis, most of them were not politicians. His campaign at the convention was managed by a group of men who barely knew him. Without burning personal loyalty, they had simply picked him as a potential winner, dropping him with equal ease when the path to his nomination proved b.u.mpy.
Finally, Lincoln's profound and elevated sense of ambition-”an ambition,” Fehrenbacher observes, ”notably free of pettiness, malice, and overindulgence,” shared little common ground with Chase's blatant obsession with office, Seward's tendency toward opportunism, or the ambivalent ambition that led Bates to withdraw from public office. Though Lincoln desired success as fiercely as any of his rivals, he did not allow his quest for office to consume the kindness and openheartedness with which he treated supporters and rivals alike, nor alter his steady commitment to the antislavery cause.
In the end, though the men who nominated Abraham Lincoln in Chicago may not have recognized all these qualities, they chose the best man for the supreme challenge looming over the nation.
CHAPTER 9
”A MAN KNOWS HIS OWN NAME”